misfits
by MessengerOfDreams
Summary: A Kloak walks into a bar in Galleon. Rated T for language and drinking. The closest I get to a Halloween story.


**A/N Halloween Story. Cause why not? Just a little piece from the side of the minions. It's not super scary cause I can't do super scary. But whatever. The Kloak is one of my favorite little baddies of all time. That laughter, man.**

**So hopefully it doesn't suck too bad.**

**Rated T for a ton of language and drinking, but there's no violence or sex or anything. Just two people at a bar. **

**Disclaimer: I own nothing, regret nothing, and let them forget nothing. **

"Hell Almighty."

The winds howled as the soldier opened the door, hanging onto his coat as he pushed with all of his might against the gale to shut it. Mumbling to himself, the skinny crocodile shook the rain from his coat and walked through the tavern. Not even bothering to look up, he walked straight to the bar and plopped down on the stool. He removed his coat, made sure all of the water was shaken out, and then put it back on. As soon as he could sense a presence near him, he muttered "beer."

The bartender noticed. In her dry, cutting voice, she asked "well, hey there, sunshine. How'd your day go?"

"It went like I need a fucking drink, get on it."

"Fuck you too, Kloak," she replied with mock cheer, slapping the Kloak on his head before swinging around to the other side of the bar. He growled at her, listening to glasses clank and liquid flow as he lay his arms on the wooden bar, exhausted.

He felt another slap on his head, and growled once more. "The fuck is your problem, Krista?" he demanded, looking up at her sharply.

"How'd you know my name?" she asked, trying to make pleasant conversation with an unpleasant person.

"It's on the goddamn nameplate outside the door," he retorted. "I'm not drunk yet."

"Let's fix that," she replied, slamming the full mug on the table. "Drink it or I will."

"You goddamn Kremlings," he mumbled as he looked the crocodile woman in the eye. He took the drink, staring her down even after she rolled her eyes and turned away. In one long guzzle, he downed the whole mug, slamming it down before him.

Spinning around, he took a hard glare at the other soldiers that littered the bar on the Galleon Docks. They were a mess, and he wondered if anyone could really blame them. They were on a strict regiment in their own roles, and that horrific king up there in the castle was doing his best to drive them all out of their minds. Sad to say, it was starting to work.

The tavern could be cleanly divided into a section of lonely, miserable souls sitting alone at different tables, crocs and other creatures loudly playing different parlor games and cursing at each other, and the section of them trying to flirt with each other- or even further- also way louder than he would prefer. He turned to Krista, who caught his gaze as she scrubbed out a row of used mugs.

"I swear to god," he mumbled, in a low, ferocious tone that made up his usual volume, "did I walk into a fucking asylum instead of a barkeep?"

"I keep telling myself that," she cracked a smirk. "It's like we let the wild ones loose instead of the domestic ones."

He turned around once more, grabbing his green coat closer towards him. "I swear to god, if we're not madmen, we're idiots."

As if he was corresponding with Kloak's narrative, one burly crocodile grabbed a smaller one by the collar of his vest, yelling "you wanna go, motherfucker? I'll put you right on your scaly ass, you piece of shit!" Even more improbably, the victim spat directly into his face, as if he was more than willing to accept the deadly ass-kicking he was threatened.

Like the rest of the bar, Kloak turned away and rolled his eyes as the young crocodile screamed until the door slammed, blocking his cries. "Fucking idiot," he growled. "What the hell did he expect?"

"Someone to save him," Krista sighed wearily as she returned to her cleaning. "He was looking right at me. Course it's not like I could do anything about that. Guy was a goddamn Kruncha. Even I couldn't have gotten through to him. You don't piss off a Kruncha."

"I've been on teams with Kutlasses before," Kloak admitted. "They're real pretentious jagoffs. They work closer to the king, y'see, so they think they're better from us. They're just last to die."

Kloak closed his eyes, ready to sink into his jacket and disappear from the setting. Regardless, he repeated "beer."

Wordlessly, Krista moved towards the tap with his mug once more. Kloak sighed, resting his head once more on the bar. Once he heard the tap cease to run, he said, "if you lay a hand on my head again, I'll cut it off."

"Well then," she replied, slamming the mug down by his head. "Drink up, sunshine. I think I need to down one as well."

"Thank you."

"Hmm, a thank you. That's a step up."

"Don't push it," he warned her, giving her a sideways glance as she walked away to set up her own drink. Krista was a strange character, he mused; her physique made her stronger and more toned than half of the men in this shithole, in direct contrast to her shoulder-length hair that was as purple as her skin. She was blunt, intimidating, and perhaps the one thing that made any sense in her tavern.

"You got some eyes on ya," she told him, noticing his stare.

"Shit," he replied instinctively. "I ain't trying to give you any ideas."

"No, your actual eyes. They always that bright? It's like I'm looking into a flashlight."

"I don't know," Kloak admitted. "I don't look into a mirror much anymore. It'd be too damn pathetic of a sight."

Krista looked over the weary crocodile. His body was one of a young man but with the weariness of the skin and demeanor of one thrice his age. "You seem worse for wear, that's for sure."

Kloak laughed, and it sounded more like a bark. "I swear to whoever-the-hell that my own reflection can't stand the sight of me anymore. Anytime I look in the mirror I don't see myself anymore. It's crazy, I gotta say."

"Either you've had too much to drink or I have."

"Let's go with both."

They nodded in unison before returning to their drinks.

"Why do you stay here?" he asked her.

She took a giant swig of her drink. "Why not?"

"Cause this place is a shithole!" he cried out. Noticing his faux pas, he added, "no offense."

"None taken, sunshine," she replied. "I'll tell you why I opened this place, though."

She gestured to the area around her. "You see all these poor, unfortunate fucks? Imagine all of these soldiers out on the streets, these shellshocked bastards that only know how to fight each other and have all of their charisma to get anyone in their life other than a two-coin whore. Male, female, Klubba, Kremling, all of them are united in the fact that they hate the king but don't have a choice, and it's eating them out from the inside. That's the secret, Kloak. I'm not a soldier anymore, but I know these people, and I know that I'm still doing a service to them and to all of the people on the Isle."

Kloak found himself nodding with her as she spoke. Damn, this woman made a lot of sense. He felt as if she was speaking directly to his being. "You oughta speak up more," he suggested. "You got some brains on you, ma'am."

She took a swig of her drink before continuing. "I'd speak up more but no one usually gives two shits to speak to the barkeeper. They're not supposed to, far as they care. Other than asking for a drink- and I use the term asking extremely loosely- they really don't give two shits whose tavern this is."

"I'll tell you what," Kloak smiled, much more sincerely than he cared to admit, "this might just be the beer talking, but I think half the reason I can stand this place is because you're possibly the only Kremling who makes a damn lick of sense on this island."

Krista gave a sharp little grin. "And you're the only patron I haven't wanted to take a two-by-four to, so I guess we're even."

He laughed, but it went from amused to sad quickly. He looked behind him at all of the other patrons, and suddenly it made him angry once more. "I can't fucking stand it," he began to ramble. "It's like I'm slowly watching them die a little bit more every day. Just slowly sinking away into nothingness. We're doing all this work, and for what? A bunch of fucking apes? We're all being used as living weapons for a blood feud between the king and _a bunch of fucking apes! _We know it, yet we don't care. As long as we can get drunk off our asses and forget about it, we're good. Sometimes I wish we all would just die already and get on with it."

Krista raised her eyebrow. "I'm assuming this is once more the beer talking." With that in mind, she took another swig.

"I don't know," he groaned. "It just pisses me off so much. There are so many of us that could just march right off into his overgrown castle and chop his head off. I tried to tell em that, but they didn't listen to me. They told me to shut my mouth before the superiors heard us. Buncha bitches, all of them. Too scared to act. They stopped talking to me after awhile. Can't blame em, all my life since I got drafted, I've been talking about how this is bullshit and how we should and can rebel against that, and I guess that gets grating on these knuckleheads after awhile."

Krista finished her drink. "I wouldn't be able to blame em," she admitted, "if it weren't true. Sometimes people really can't handle being challenged, even if the alternative is…" she gestured to the bar around her.

"That shit?" Kloak smirked. "No joke. Honestly, though, I get it now. It's exhausting trying to stand up against something on your own. I was on my own, too. The misfit of the Kloak Division. Everyone else took the kloak as something to hide into, but I always figured it meant I stood out, was something the others weren't. I guess it did, but in all the wrong ways. We were all fighting for the right to live in this world, but everyone else wanted to go home to their lovers and children or drinking buddies. No, my place in the world always belonged to the dark shadows and the empty spaces, whether I liked it or not. Guess it was because I talked about dark shit and was never in a good mood. I used to pity myself, my lot in the world. Now I realize it's what I got and I may as well make the most of it."

Krista took a second to react from his diatribe, still processing his words. Slowly, she nodded. "You say you're satisfied," she pointed out, "but get a few beers in you and it all comes back."

"It does," Kloak admitted. "I guess that's the closest I get to being alive again."

"Probably what brings everyone here," Krista replied. "And look at me, profiteering off of other people's mystery. It's enough to call for another beer"

"I think you're more like the provider of the cure," he told her. "At least, for the few hours it helps. It makes em go crazy, sure, but they were already pretty cracked to begin with."

"Hmm." Krista considered it, and then proceeded to pour herself another beer regardless.

Kloak nodded, forced a smile, and proceeded to button up his jacket. "Consider it." He reached into his pocket and pulled out a handful of coins. "This should cover my tab. And if it doesn't, keep it. I don't have much else to do with it."

Krista smiled back. "You gonna leave me with all these nuts?"

"I think you're the only one who knows how to handle them. Take care, Krista, and good luck getting through this horror story." With that, Kloak put his hands in his pockets, and walked away.

"It's a horror story," Krista replied as he left her earshot, "but it's the only one I know how to tell."

With a sigh, Krista returned to her work, but not before pouring herself another beer. She mused on the fact that Kloak was right, the beer was the only way one could feel alive in these parts. Even seven years off the battlefield it felt like she had just come home. Maybe something did need to change around here.

She closed her eyes, still feeling the heat of two red eyes on her skin as she felt the buzz drift away, leaving her alone again.

**~MoG~**

Meanwhile, on the other side of the bar, one Kruncha elbowed another and said "the chick that runs the bar… she always talk to herself?"

"I don't know," his drinking buddy replied, loudly over the chaos of another fight. "They say that she's got some massive PTSD to work on, but she seems pretty normal to me. Not bad looking, I'll say, but I wouldn't cross her path. She'd probably kill me."

"I wouldn't press my luck either," the first said. "She's a misfit if ever there was one."

The second one nodded. "I swear to God that there was a floating coat over there. And when I'm seeing floating jackets, that's the sign, man, my put-down-the-drink-and-get-the-fuck-home signal."

"You said it."

And, of course, neither one actually did put their drink down.

**Yay for wholly unoriginal twists. ****Ah well, it was fun.  
**

**~MoD**


End file.
